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It has become the most media animal of the moment thanks to the research of López Otín's team. They call 'Turritopsis dohrnii' immortal, but how does it do it?
The recent scientific publication by the team of researchers from the University of Oviedo led by the Aragonese Carlos López Otin has given media echo to a fact already known to the scientific community: that in some types of jellyfish their cells have the ability to rejuvenate.
In this select group of immortals is the 'Turritopsis dohrnii', a tiny jellyfish (an adult specimen does not usually exceed 4 millimeters in size) that lives in the waters of the Italian Mediterranean and the Sea of Japan. They share this privilege of nature the jellyfish'Laodicea undulata' and 'Aurelia sp.1'.
The following graph shows how in the life cycle of jellyfish, some species can go through different reproductive phases. In such a way that when they form colonies of polyps and live clinging to the seabed, they reproduce asexually. That is Solitary individuals emerge from its branches and grow to become adult jellyfish.. When they reach this phase, they can reproduce sexually, for which a male and a female will be needed:
The 'immortal' jellyfish They have the same life cycle with the difference that, instead of aging and dying, like any other species, these They have the ability to become polyps again.
Life cycle of the 'immortal' jellyfish
Apart from having deciphered the genome of the jellyfish, one of the questions that the research published this week has revealed is the dedifferentiation of the cells. It is a process by whichThe animal's cells are reprogrammed, allowing them to go from being specialized cells to stem cells and thus having the ability to become any other cell in the body.
Thus, several duplicated genes have been identified in the genome of jellyfish that, according to the scientists who have carried out the research, may be candidates to continue developing, in the long term, scientific and clinical studies related to diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative or cardiovascular.
Source: Heraldo de Aragón
